Percentage
of Salmonella typhi resistant to antibiotic nalidixic acid per
state in 2013.NARMS/CDC

Many of us have had a brush with food poisoning. The rumble in
your stomach after eating that questionable leftover pad Thai is
unmistakable and can leave you helplessly on your couch for days.

Foodborne illnesses in the US are extremely common.

The Centers
for Disease control (CDC) estimates that each year, 1 in 6
Americans are sickened by contaminated food and beverages. This
adds up to about 48 million people per year,
128,000 of whom are hospitalized, and 3,000 of whom die.

Most stomach bugs can clear up on their own or can be treated
with a quick shot of antibiotics, but more and more,
drug-resistant bacteria are creeping into our food supply and
making people severely ill, with few options for treatment.

These antibiotic-resistant superbugs are sickening 2
million people in the US per year, the CDC estimates, and of
those, about 23,000 people die. About 440,000 of those
illnesses are caught from germs spread through food.

In an effort to track and easily visualize the spread of
drug-resistant superbugs, the CDC created a new tool with interactive
maps and tables that allows users to see where specific
antibiotic-resistant bacteria isolated from humans have been
found over the past 20 years.

They tell a terrifying tale: Antibtiotic-resistant food poisoning
bugs cropping up more often and in more places. The animation
below is just one staggering example of the tool.

Salmonella typhi is a bacteria that causes life-threatening
typhoid fever, which includes high fever, weakness, stomach
pain, headache, and loss of appetite. The bacteria is spread
through food and drinks handled by someone with the bacteria, or
if contaminated sewage gets into your drinking water.

The graphic below shows which percentage of the samples of
Salmonella from sick people that have become resistant to
nalidixic
acid, a synthetic antibiotic that is used to treat broad
swaths of serious antibiotic-resistant infections.

The scale for each state goes from green (no antibiotic resistant
bacteria detected in samples) to red (100% of the bacteria tested
were resistant). You can see the red and orange states pop up
repeatedly and increasingly across the country:

It also shows how resistance to the antibiotic has grown since
1999 in graph form, which is equally jaw-dropping.

This graph shows the
increase of nalidixic acid resistant Salmonella typhi across the
US from 1999 to 2013.NARMS/CDC

In addition to Salmonella, the tool also includes other bacteria
most commonly spread through food, such as Campylobacter,
E. coli O157, and Shigella.

Campylobacterlurks in uncooked
poultry, raw milk, and untreated water. Most people get diarrhea,
cramping, stomach pain, and a fever between two to five days
after eating foods or beverages contaminated with the bacteria.
As of 2012, the CDC
estimates that it causes 1.3 million illnesses and 120 deaths
in the US each year.

Most E. coli, in general, are harmless and live
happily in the intestines of people and animals. But some types can cause
illness, including Shiga toxin-producing E. coli — which includes
E. coli 0157. You can pick up this bug from improperly cooked
beef, raw milk, unwashed hands, and untreated drinking water.

Shigella is also particularly nasty. About a day
or two after exposure, you can get diarrhea, fever, and stomach
cramps. The US has about 14,000 cases per year, but the CDC
estimates that the actual number of illnesses are about 20 times
that number, since cases often go undiagnosed or under reported.

The tool currently allows you to see data on these four
drug-resistant bacteria from 1996 to 2013. The CDC said in a
press conference that they hope to include data from 2014 and
2015 by the end of this year.